A nice build up into a positive sounding soundscape. I'd like to listen to the longer version :-) I like resting listening to such tracks.

Liked this one a lot! The metallic sound of the original drip recording permeates the track and gives it a striking musical tone :)

@greghooper: Quick disclosure: just the tracking was done on the iPhone. Processing was done in Ableton Live on a laptop. Thanks for listening.

feels like a narrative, following a few drops of water as their accelerated masses combine and turn into a singular force.

Feels like such a long, but enjoyable journey from the beginning of the track to the end - wonderful how you've made the simple sounds stretch out and blend and build in this way... I agree with Bojanix, I could listen to a much longer version, too.

A set of tracks from the 29th weekly project from the Disquiet Junto group. 

The Assignment: Make music from running water, inspired by William Gibson's novel Count Zero.

More information on the group at: 

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

More on the specific project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero

Free download, if you fancy it.

This one had been sitting on my HD for a while so I decided to finish the mix and let it see the light of day.

Written and produced by Chris Sharp.

(c) 2024 Chris Sharp
(p) 2024 Chris Sharp

Q London

This week's assignment was to make gentle music using one sound source, a 90-minute recording of someone playing clay bowls.

As a bit of a reaction to the massive length of the recording, I decided to drill into tiny sections and make something pretty tightly rhythmic and dry sounding. 

Mostly I then just layered up those bits that I found looped nicely and faded them in and out. There's some high crackly sounds which were the result of EQing some background noises from the recording to bring out the high bits, then feeding that stuff through a delay.

As a last step, I dragged down the tempo of the final piece by about 15 bpm and found it worked better like that. :)

More on this 284th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Creative Commonfield: Make ambient music from the sound of clay bowls. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0284/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0284-creative-commonfield/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image courtesy of fraenkelgallery.com and the artist Chris Kallmyer, who created the bowls and the source audio. More from Kallmyer at:

http://www.chriskallmyer.com/

[junto 0284] Creative Commonfield

Jet Jaguar - Hokusai in a Paperweight [disquiet0284] (free download)

3 log (disquiet0285)

The first barcode was a graphical extension of Morse code. That's how Norman Joseph Woodland arrived at his barcode prototype in the 1940's while living in his father's beachfront apartment. One imagines Woodland drawing with a wooden stick in the soft Florida sands, extending a series of dots and dashes into the cryptic patterns we all recognize today.

Morse code is commonly thought to be a mechanism of distress. Everyone knows the code signifying "SOS," for example. The lyrics of "Dot Dash," a song by punk legends Wire, appear to reference a more neutral approach to crisis. The narrator's indifference to an upcoming automobile accident is oddly casual, almost clinically observant: "Progressive acceleration / Skidding, but the expression / Remains pan."

It's interesting how, decades after Woodland revolutionized the transactional landscape, our emotional response to barcodes is one of lax familiarity. We get bored with innovation when we're constantly exposed to it. Using a self-checkout scanner at the local grocer has all the excitement of waiting for a traffic light to change. We simply go through the motions: beep, navel oranges, two for a dollar. Beep, bag of crisps for one seventy-nine. Whatever.

For this piece, Suss Müsik created a nine-part sequence based on three barcodes. Each "hit" was played using pieces of wood and overlapped according to variances in line thickness. As the rotation became more dense, a bit of reverb and panning was used to separate the layers and compress the more piercing frequencies.

Noting that one of the barcodes resembled an elongated set of piano keys, Suss Müsik identified individual notes and arrived at a somewhat accidental chord sequence that deadens the senses after two measures. Perhaps that's what Wire was getting at with "Dot Dash" and the lesson of Woodland's invention: random discoveries and events are unavoidably circumstantial, and the emotional responses they elicit can be surprisingly mundane.

The piece is titled Philco, named after the company who purchased Woodland's patent in 1962 after IBM declined to pay his asking price. 

Postscript: the wood percussion by itself is actually quite interesting, if a bit dry. If there is interest among Junto participants in hearing this part as an isolated track, let Suss Müsik know via comment and we'll post it.

More on this 285th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Live Barcoding: Make rhythms from your packaged goods. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0285/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0285-live-barcoding/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Philco [Disquiet0285]

Synths and treatments  by DD, Paris 2017

Disquiet Junto Project 0285: Live Barcoding
 
I used different constant delays and skidder FX but changing the setting time/pattern from one measure to the next, so every chord has it’s own repetitive tail. 
In a way  the full track could be read as a barcode interpretation. 
Cheers
DD


More on this 285th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Live Barcoding: Make rhythms from your packaged goods. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0285/3

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0285-live-barcoding

when barcoded bipedal mammals are finally extinct (disquiet0285)

date released 13.04.2018

made with ensoniq

- work of street artist  -RUN-

check paint  (disquiet0328)

Suss Müsik admits that the words “pentimento” and “pimiento” are similar in appearance, and there was great temptation to do a piece on red peppers. Thankfully, you’re spared such shenanigans.

Suss Müsik also admits that although the work of Jon Hassell is admirable and important, his name isn’t what comes to mind when considering audio pentimeni. Rather, it is the dub stylings of Lee Scratch Perry, Adrian Sherwood/African Head Charge and others who best represent the concept of layering upon previous work to reveal new sonic landscapes – much the same way a billboard advertisement is scrubbed away by weather and wear & tear.

For this weird, almost dubby piece, Suss Müsik started with four submissions from previous Disquiet Junto Projects. (We’ll leave it to you to identify which ones were used). One segments was “scrubbed” using a Red Panda Tensor pedal.  Another was stretched and run through a Moog MF-102 ring modulator, and another was played straight through a low-pass filter at various frequencies. The drum patterns were split and given a nice dollop of reverb.

The piece is titled after the artist and educator Merle Spandorfer, who passed away this week at the age of 83. Among Spandorfer’s contributions to painting was her advocacy for using non-toxic materials; her mixed-media works consisted of items from nature overlaid onto handmade paper.

The image is a fading sign on the side of a building somewhere in Louisville, Kentucky.

More on this 328th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Sonic Pentimento: Record a piece of music inspired by a term from painting) at:

https://disquiet.com/0328/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0328-sonic-pentimento/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Spandorfer [Disquiet0328]

Hidden Intention (disquiet0328)

I had just the field recording for this.  It was recorded in early 2011 at a garden center / drug store near my house.  The sprinkler was on a timer and was watering trees and shrubs late in the evening, and I heard it while exiting the store so I ran home and got my portable digital audio recorder and got about 8 minutes along with bird and parking lot sounds while sitting in my car.

For this piece, I carved out a little over 2 minutes of the field recording then added some of the rhythm source I used in Disquiet0020 Nodebeat, a looped bit of the train sound I used in Disquiet0002 Duet, along with some background color used in Disquiet0001 Ice.

Had to mix it all so the non-sprinkler rhythms wouldn't overpower the source, as advised.  I think the Nodebeat rhythm is very complimentary even if it and the sprinkler regularly go out of phase but I like it when things go out of phase.

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info 

Prickly Sprinkler (disquiet0029-countzero)

This is four recordings of rain hitting inverted singing bowls of varying sizes. These were then cut into samples of 15, 13, 11 and 9 seconds and then looped 8 times. After the 4th repetition of each sample, I faded in the hold function on the "Ambient" VST which freezes any sound.  There was also some ping pong delay, overdrive and EQ'ing involved with each sample.

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero 

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/ ;

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto

Forecast [disquiet0029-countzero]

Disquiet Junto Project 0029: Count Zero

  This week's project is inspired by an aside that occurs at the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel Count Zero, originally published in 1986. The chapter is titled "The Squirrel Wood." It opens as follows:   "The plane had gone to ground near the sound of running water. Turner could hear it, turning in the g-web in his fever or sleep, water down stone, one of the oldest songs."  

This idea of water running down stone, of a gentle but insistent natural stream, being one of the "oldest songs" is explored further in the chapter in various subtle ways. The Disquiet Junto project this week is to explore that idea: that there is music in the natural environment. We'll makes songs from running water.  

Instructions:

  Step 1: Locate and make a field recording of source material that involves running water. It can be a stream, as in the Gibson book, but it needn't be natural. The sink, a toilet, a hose in the backyard — any such source material would be fine.  

Step 2: Extract a segment of the recording. That segment will serve as the basis for your composition, as its foundation. It will provide both rhythmic and melodic material. You can either use one long piece of the recording, or you can create the foundation of the track by combining and looping one or more brief segments of your original field recording.

  Step 3: Add elements and treatments to the foundation recording of running water. Do so with the intention of highlighting the water's internal sense of rhythm and melody. Do not embellish so much that the foundation recording becomes unrecognizable.   

Information:

This was a fairly rushed project as I am on business in Baltimore and New York at the moment. God bless wifi on Amtrak's Acela Express … greetings from Delaware at speed!

The recordings were made with an iPhone and the 4 track app of a dripping faucet/tap in my hotel (I had to make it drip, the plumbing was fine) and the overrun of the shower as it hit the resonant faucet beneath.

From these I was able to take a number of rhythmic, semi-resonant loops that I brought into Ableton Live for processing. If you've listened to many of my Junto projects, you'll know that I try to steer clear of pieces that only contain rhythmic constituents, so I also created a couple of granular patches from the sound waves of the water. This all seemed to give the track a post-rock/ambient feel.

These harmonic tracks were run through various instances of Guitar Rig to give some depth to the sounds. All the while, the rhythmic water sounds were pushed around the stereo field a little and given some glitchy movement.

Conceptually I saw this as pulling melody from rhythm with the latter being almost a cage within which the harmonic character is restrained.  

Credits:

Photo: Faucet in Baltimore @echosonic

  The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.  

More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at: 

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

A Good Morning in Baltimore [disquiet0029-countzero]

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero. More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/. More details on the Disquiet Junto at http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info.

Process:
- take a 30-second excerpt from a field recording I made of the Contoocook River in Peterborough, NH
- time-stretch it 7x in Paul's Extreme Stretch
- in Csound:
-- derive the spectral centroid[1] of each stereo track
-- use the centroid to control the pitch of a pair of sinewave oscillators
-- pass the oscillator tones through some reverb
-- combine the tones with the streatched water sound, crossfading so that the tones increase in amplitude as the water sound decreases
- convert to MP3 in Audacity

Image: "Animated loop of simulated hydrogen line spectra centroid jitter." found at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/powerfrq.html, no copyright declared.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_centroid

Subsurface Tension [disquiet0029-countzero]

My 33 1/3 series book about the Aphex Twin album <i>Selected Ambient Works Volume II</i> was published in 2014. The book was one of the top 5 bestselling titles for the calendar year, and in 2015 was ranked by Pitchfork as one of the "33 best" of the 100-plus books in the 33 1/3 series. It has subsequently been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018)

Since 2012 I have moderated the Disquiet Junto group, which began on SoundCloud. More at disquiet.com/junto. 

I've written for Nature, Pitchfork, The Wire, Down Beat, Boing Boing, NewMusicBox, Red Bull Music Academy, Art Practical, the website of The Atlantic, and many other publications. 

I've exhibited sound art at galleries in Los Angeles (Crewest), Manhattan (apex art), and Dubai (DUTAC), and I had a audio-visual installation at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of its 45th anniversary.

And since 1996 I've run the website Disquiet.com about the intersection of sound, art, and technology.

One half of Venona Pers (www.venonapers.com / SC link: http://soundcloud.com/venona-pers), echosonic is my long-standing solo music project. These days it tends to the more extreme end of the scale and as an on/off project. An mini-album (Gauze) was released in 2009 through the Fwonk net label (http://fwonk.com/releases/fw023/) which included material from a number of sessions pieced together into a series of tracks incorporating drifting washes of noise and haunting melodies. A single, Droplets (http://fwonk.co.uk/154/), was released in late 2014 through Fwonk, while I am a long-standing contributor to both the Disquiet Junto and Fwonk compilation series.

A Good Morning in Baltimore [disquiet0029-countzero]

echosonic

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